“OK,” Howie finally said, looking up at us. “We’re as ready as we’re going to be. It’s ten forty eight; we’re set to go at eleven. We’ll have the printout about six minutes after the time period is up, so we’ll get the first one at eleven twenty-one. That won’t do us any good, because we’ll have nothing to cross-check it against. We’ll have the second report at eleven thirty-six. There’s no way to tell how many reports we’ll need to eliminate all but one.”
He seemed to be a smart and confident guy, which made me feel better that he knew what he was doing. I liked him, and if he screwed it up, I was going to kill him.
But the bottom line was that we would not have anything to cross-check for forty-eight minutes. Since each minute seemed to take about four hours, we were looking at a long wait.
I didn’t want to e-mail Bryan, because I didn’t want him to use up computer power in responding. There was also no need; he knew what he was supposed to do, and would do it as long as he could.
I called Barone and told him what was going on, and asked him to send backup officers and position them in various areas in the three counties we were looking at. I wanted us to be able to get to Bryan as fast as possible once we knew where he was.
And then my mind wandered back to Brayton, again probably because I didn’t want to think about Bryan, counting on us, waiting in that room.
Ordinarily, in a situation like that, I would write down everything I knew. It helps me to think clearly, to make sense out of things that sometimes seem nonsensical. I didn’t have time for that now, so I couldn’t get my mind around certain questions.
Why would Carlton have been killed? He was no longer a factor in the mining operation; Hanson had already bought the land from him. Was it revenge by the townspeople? That hardly seemed likely. Was it to keep him quiet? Quiet about what?
What could Carlton have told Gallagher, and why did it send him to the drilling site? And what was he doing feeling around in the dirt, and looking at the drilling equipment?
They were questions I would answer, but they would have to wait. It was eleven twenty-one, and the first set of lists was being printed out.
Sarah handed them to us. They were different sizes, and probably averaged about six hundred addresses on each one. We spread them out in front of us on large desks, looking over them, and discussed the best way to go about the cross-checking.
But for the time being we were unable to do anything with the lists.
That would wait for the next list, which would provide something to cross-check them against.
Then it would be showtime.
The situation was way out there beyond the Planet Surreal.
Bryan could see that, even through the haze of fear that was enveloping him.
He was sitting underground, running out of air to breathe, counting on TV programs to save him. On the same table as the remote control was a glass of water and two pills, which he would use to kill himself at the first sign of impending suffocation. And the last person he would probably ever hear speak was on television, trying to sell him a miracle kitchen gadget.
He had a million questions that he wanted to ask Lucas, most of them about Gallagher and the situation in Brayton. For a short while Lucas had been so upbeat about it, and then he stopped mentioning it.
Bryan wondered what had happened, why it had gotten to the point where this thing with the television became what seemed to be his last chance. Had Gallagher refused to intervene, and had Lucas now given up on that?
But Bryan did not want to send an e-mail asking those questions. The computer had long ago told him that it was on reserve power, and he wanted to conserve what little he had left.
He wished he could go online and learn how he would feel when the air started to run out. Would there be a period of time where he felt only short of breath, and slightly dizzy? Would it allow him time to take the pills, and alleviate the suffering? And how long would the pills take to work? All of these questions would go unanswered.
Bryan considered writing a final message to the world, on pencil and paper, a medium that didn’t slowly reduce its “percentage of power” remaining. He had thought about it frequently during the previous six days, but didn’t know that there was anything special he wanted to say. Or that anyone would ever find the note, or his body.
So all he planned to do was switch the dial at each fifteen-minute interval and wait to be rescued, or to die.
The second set of lists came right on time, six minutes after the time period ended.
Nobody said a word; we all just launched ourselves into the job of cross-checking it with the first lists. It was a tedious, time-consuming job, made even more daunting by the tremendous pressure we were feeling.
My approach was to take the first address on list one and try to find it on list two. If I did, I’d put a checkmark next to it on both lists. If I didn’t, I’d put an “x” by it on list one, but I didn’t cross it out, in case it was on list two and I had just missed it.
It was so slow that I had the sinking feeling that we were going to fail, even if the process worked. I wanted to speed up the work, but I was haunted by the fear that in doing so I’d miss something. If Bryan’s address was on there and we passed over it, just once, then all hope would be lost.
It took me an hour and five minutes to get through my list, and I found thirty-seven addresses common to both lists. I was the first one finished, Julie was second, and the others were all done within fifteen minutes of me. The strain everyone was under was evident in their faces.
While we were working, other lists were being generated, as other fifteen-minute segments concluded. Since we only had to cross-check them against those names that were common to the first two sets of lists, this would go much faster but still take some time.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon before we narrowed it down to a manageable number. At that point we had seventeen addresses in the target area, though I was suddenly flooded with the fear that maybe we weren’t looking in the right place at all.
We had only narrowed it down to northwest Jersey because of the weather outages. What if the information we had been given was wrong? What if there had been outages someplace else? Bryan could be in Connecticut, or New York. Or what if Bryan’s particular outage wasn’t weather related at all? What if it was a local glitch?
But we were where we were, and seventeen was a limited-enough list to get started. I called Barone, and told him to start sending officers to the locations.
I was torn, not sure whether to go out in the field myself or wait for another list that would narrow it down further. I decided to wait, at least for one more list. And then I’d be on the move.
But first I had to make sure that Bryan believed we would save him, so he wouldn’t take his own life. If I was wrong, and I knew that could very well be the case, it would be a last, terrible betrayal.
We’re coming for you, Bryan … it won’t be long now.
You can count on it.
The rally was set for 6 PM, and it would be huge.
That became obvious when people started arriving before noon. They joined those already camping out there, and by two o’clock, with four hours still to go, the crowd had swelled to almost six thousand.
Edward Holland and Tony Brus agreed on a plan to clear the land of people. Holland would speak at the beginning of the rally, asking everyone to leave. Neither man had any real hope that his words would be effective, and Brus would have his officers on the scene, ready to move in if it became necessary.
Brus had instructed his officers on procedure. The goal was to get the people out of there and then quickly construct barricades to prevent them from coming back. There was no desire to arrest people; these were not criminals and should not be treated as such.